Reflections of the nexus between justice and peacebuilding

ABSTRACT

This commentary reflects on eight articles recently published in this journal as part of a special issue on the nexus between transitional justice and statebuilding (Volume 10, Issue 3, 2016). It positions the special issue within an emerging ‘fourth phase’ literature on transitional justice that draws on critiques of liberal peacebuilding to urge an expansion of its boundaries to embrace socio-economic issues. It is argued that the type of analysis found in the special issue, characterized by in-depth, on-the-ground empirical analysis of complex domestic politics of material accumulation and ideological contestation, marks a significant and welcome advance in a literature which to this point has been largely de-contextualized, exhortatory and over-reliant on tired binaries of the ‘international and the local’ or the ‘liberal and legitimate’.

KEYWORDS:

• Elites
• liberal peacebuilding
• peace agreements
• political economy
• transitional justice
• socio-economic rights

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Padraig McAuliffe is a senior lecturer in the School of Law and Social Justice in the University of Liverpool. His primary research interest is transitional justice. He is the author of Transformative Transitional Justice and the Malleability of Post-Conflict States (Edward Elgar, 2017) ([email protected]).